Candles fill a memorial site where Alissa Parraz and Nycholas Parraz were shot and killed in Goshen. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
The father of an infant murdered in a gang-related mass shooting in the Central Valley is suing the county that placed his son in the home just days before it happened.
Shayne Maupin, the father of 10-month-old Nycholas Parraz, alleges Tulare County social workers and sheriff’s deputies failed to fulfill their mandatory duties under California law, causing the deaths of Nycholas and his mother, 16-year-old Alissa Parraz.
Alissa and Nycholas were murdered in a violent shooting in the small, unincorporated community of Goshen, west of Visalia, on Jan. 16
Surveillance video played at a press conference in February showed Alissa running down the driveway and dropping her son over a fence, before jumping over a chain-link gate in an attempt to escape. In the video, a man with a rifle is seen following them.
Deputies responding to a 911 call found Alissa’s and Nycholas’ bodies in the street. Both had been shot in the head.
Nycholas, who had been in foster care for most of his life, was returned to his mother just three days earlier.
Tulare County Child Welfare Services had taken custody of Nycholas shortly after he was born. Maupin, who lives in Modoc County, where Alissa previously lived, had visited his son and fiancée often in the months leading up to the shooting, according to the family.
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said law enforcement believed the shooting to be a targeted, gang-related attack. His department was familiar with the house where Alissa was living and had recently executed a search warrant there, Boudreaux said.
Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux provides information during a press conference about the shooting that left 6 people dead in Goshen. (Joshua Yeager/KVPR)
In a 48-page complaint (PDF) filed in Tulare County on Aug. 4, Maupin’s attorneys allege Tulare County Child Welfare Services employees failed to assess the home where Alissa was living with her father’s family before placing Nycholas there “despite the presence of active gang members.”
“If CWS and the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office had discharged their mandatory duties, this tragedy could have been averted,” the complaint reads.
Tulare County, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and Tulare County Child Welfare Services are named as defendants in the case, along with seven sheriff’s officers, three social workers and a CWS supervisor.
Spokespeople for Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency and the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
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Four others were killed in the shooting, including Alissa’s great-uncle, Eladio Parraz, Jr., 52; grandmother, Jennifer Analla, 49; great-grandmother, Rosa Parraz, 72; and cousin, Marcos Parraz, 19.
Maupin’s attorneys allege that months before the shooting a social worker assigned to Nycholas’ case had discovered through a background check that a member of the household had numerous felony convictions and charges but did not notify the juvenile court.
“They were on notice for months and months that there were problematic individuals in that home and they just did nothing with the information,” said Maupin’s attorney, Wyatt Vespermann.
Nycholas’ paternal grandmother, Valerie Gensel, said her family had wanted partial custody of Nycholas. At a Jan. 13 juvenile court hearing, Nycholas was instead returned full-time to Alissa under county supervision.
Three days later, they were both murdered.
“There’s no justice. There’s nothing that can bring them back,” Gensel said. “It’s like taking your soul in and out of your body over and over, watching it. It breaks you.”
The lawsuit also alleges Tulare County sheriff’s deputies failed to report suspected child abuse or neglect to CWS 13 days before the shooting.
Shayne Maupin, Alissa Parraz and their son Nycholas Parraz Maupin pose for a photo in May of 2022, when Shayne met his son for the first time. (Courtesy of Valerie Gensel)
According to a report reviewed by KQED, sheriff’s deputies looking for Alissa’s grandfather, Martin Peña Parraz, who had an active parole warrant, encountered his brother, Eladio Parraz Jr., in the driveway of the house on Jan. 3.
“Martin and his brother Eladio Parraz are documented Sureño gang members in Tulare County,” a deputy wrote in the report.
A search of a trailer on the property belonging to Parraz Jr. turned up an illegal gun, ammunition, methamphetamine, pipes for smoking meth, body armor and 10 bags of marijuana, according to the report. Parraz Jr. was arrested and released on bond.
Alissa and another minor were at the house at the time of the search.
Law enforcement is required to report suspected child abuse or neglect under the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (PDF). Deputies did not contact Child Welfare Services because, according to Tulare County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Ashley Ritchie, the drugs and guns were found in the trailer and not in the house.
The trailer, one of two on the property, was a “completely different residence from where Alissa was living,” Ritchie told KQED in a Feb. 17 email.
“Had the drugs, guns been found inside the home at the time of the check, we would have contacted CWS. But they were not. They were found in the trailer, which was separated from the house and fenced off,” she wrote in another email on March 1.
Maupin’s attorney, Wyatt Vespermann, said officers who did not contact CWS missed an opportunity.
“They saw a young mother with a baby crib in her bedroom, in a house with meth and methamphetamine pipes, body armor, AR rifles with no serial numbers on them, bullet holes in the wall — just a long list of red flags,” Vespermann said. “The law requires them to pick up the phone and let Child Protective Services know that this is what’s going on with Alissa and they just didn’t do it.”
Two suspected gunmen, 35-year-old Angel Joseph Uriarte and 25-year-old Noah David-Hamilton Beard, were arrested in February. They were charged with six counts of first degree murder with special circumstances, among other charges. Both pleaded not guilty. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for October.
The lawsuit names seven other children whom Vespermann said have died, or nearly died, while in the care, custody or control of Tulare County Child Welfare Services within the past three years.
One of them, 3-year-old Journey Gonzalez, suffered “near brain death” as an infant in 2020 after social workers failed to follow-up on reports that he showed signs of malnutrition while in the custody of his parents, according to a 2021 lawsuit (PDF) filed through his grandmother, Patrizia Sanchez.
Gonzalez’s parents did not believe in modern medicine and opted for feeding him fruits and vegetables over breast milk, according to court records.
Within weeks of the shooting in Goshen, Sanchez also reached out to Maupin’s mother, Valerie Gensel.
“It was awful to speak to her and hear her cry,” Sanchez said. “I just wanted to tell her whatever she does, do not give up. I want to build up a group of victims to come together. I was just a listening ear with her. She was just distraught. It was awful.”
Panish Shea Boyle Ravipudi LLP, the Los Angeles law firm that represented Sanchez in the case, is now representing Maupin.
“There is a pattern and practice of indifference with respect to the lives of infants” in Tulare County, Vespermann said, adding that he has seen issues with California’s child welfare system through other cases in different counties.
“It’s a fragmented patchwork system,” he continued. “Each county is doing their own thing and for the most part, they’re doing it poorly. I don’t know why the system has been designed to be so disjointed and fragmented, but the results are very, very poor for these children.”
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